Tainted Love

Since the break-up, my father continues to send me birthday cards. Last year’s sentiment was about 1963 being a great year because it was the year they “got me”. This year I got a once-every-few-decades compliment about what a nice young man Austin has become. But not only was it tainted by a disclaimer that I “had done a good job for a single parent”, it was a homemade card with a picture on the front of him and me together on the patio of a garden home he purchased in 1982.

I distinctly remember the day the picture was taken. My brother was behind the camera. He had a weekend furlough from the halfway house he was in at the time and my father was just thrilled about the fact that the kid had to come to his house, what most folks would call home.

Appearances always being priority, pictures were in order, but each of us knew that the others would rather be anywhere else. We were dressed up for my grandmother’s first holiday open house in her new retirement home. If I recall correctly, the words spoken that entire day could be counted on about three hands.

A lot was happening around this time. My mother had died the year before. My father had been in a drunken stupor for months (I had too, now that I think about it). He was either traveling or at his girlfriend’s (no need to state the obvious here) house most of the time and I was in college, so I had been instructed to give my seven-year-old dog away just a few months before. And he had just sold our family home to move into this hip new bachelor pad.

More than a few of my requests to come home from school for weekend visits around this time were met the same response: “I would prefer that you not come home this weekend”. In many a conversation about my inability to emotionally process my father's transition, my grandmother let me know that he had told her that he was “closing this chapter of his life”. So, apparently, anything before 1982 had no place.

Perfect choice. Thanks for the memories, as usual, Tim.